


French War Camp, 13 & 14 November 1637

by Anima Nightmate (faithhope)



Series: All For One and, well, you know the rest... [46]
Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon Era, Franco-Spanish War, Gen, Internal Conflict, Internal Monologue, Sleep Deprivation, Stress, Swearing, Thirty Years War, Wartime
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-25
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-16 05:47:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29695935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faithhope/pseuds/Anima%20Nightmate
Summary: Grey days and cold, lonely nights. Wherever you run, you take yourself with you.*Another installment in the long series of pieces based around the black box that is the Musketeers during the Spanish War.
Relationships: Porthos & Charon (in memory), Porthos/Aramis (in memory), Porthos/Flea (in memory), d'Artagnan & Athos | Comte de la Fère & Porthos du Vallon
Series: All For One and, well, you know the rest... [46]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/944322
Comments: 3
Kudos: 9





	French War Camp, 13 & 14 November 1637

Looking back, he reckons it’s the lack of sleep that did it, in the end. Cold and dark and uncomfortable and noisy – that he can do. He’s had ‘sleeping in horrible places’ down since he was a kid. Wouldn’t have survived, else.

Learned how to sleep through some proper nasty sounds, his night-time mind able to sift what’s a danger and what’s not.

This, though? He’s got to be on it _all the time_. He’s got to be up, arming, or never have fully disarmed in the first place. His mind’s got to be _close to the surface_ at all times, day and night. And has been doing this crap for two _fucking_ months without cease on top of the fucking _years_ they’ve been out here already. And a bunch of the alarums ain’t real, but enough of them are that you have to treat them all as real. Just in case.

Coz it’s not just him who might die, after all. He’s got people depending on him.

He’s not sure how Athos does it. Starting to think the man just doesn’t sleep, not really, just dozes, fully armed, in his Captain’s chair.

The lad just bounces still. Fuck, he remembers being that young, and it weren’t that long ago, but he can’t bounce no more. Not like that. So d’Artagnan sleeps, properly; wakes; stumbles into action, more often than not one of them catching him to say: “Get your head down – just another false alarm.”

Athos confides once that he reckons d’Artagnan don’t even wake up when it’s like that, he’s just like one of them toys on springs and all you got to do is flip the catch and he stops dead until he’s needed again.

He thinks he’s seen one of them, doesn’t have real clear memories of it, like, just… brightly coloured glimpses, heat, sweet smells, his mother’s voice. Was that when they were still with Belgard? Fuck ’im, eh? Fuck. Him.

The lines are getting blurry – both on the field and in his head. Sometimes the Spanish sound so fucking close, and not even war noises, just them singing or the _clangclangclang_ of the armourers and that. Hear women’s voices too, he’s sure of it. The Spanish have been encamped there longer, he supposes. Got one of them regular war towns set up – wives and mistresses and whores and bath houses and bakers and, and… and fuck knows what and he’s back in Îl-de-Ré, but that wasn’t like this, and sometimes he wishes he was a normal soldier again, just someone who slept and woke and ate and shot and fought when he was told. Yeah, maybe an artillery man, with them bigger cannon they got nowadays, big, soaring mechanisms, something he can lend his brain to, his strength to, never looking at– never seeing–

Sleeping all through the fucking night for a fucking start.

He’s been hungry before, and cold before, and–

_I told ya – better off stayin’ ’ere, mate, where you know what’s what. Where no fucker’s shootin’ at ya, for a fuckin’ start…_

Yeah, yeah, clever cunt, leave me be, eh? Let me fucking sleep.

 _No more sleep for_ you _, soldier boy. Any minute now._ Aaaany _minute now._

Fuck off. And you’re dead anyway.

_Yeah, only alive in you, in your head, like that play ’e took you to, all madness and blood and too many words, right over your ’ead._

Macbeth. Weren’t over my head, that’s the joke.

 _That_ were _the joke, sunshine. Now it’s all guilt and mayhem and the blood ain’t from a pig’s bladder._

Fuck off.

 _Ain’t even anyone to share it with, anyway, ain’t no-one to talk to ’cept me, and I’m fuckin’ dead, so joke’s on_ you!

You always did talk too fucking much.

 _And_ now _you can’t shut me up like you used to._

Fuck off.

_What’s that noise?_

Shut up.

_Wwwwhat’s that noise though, eh?_

Get to fuck.

_Is it… a Spanish soldier come to murder you? Murder the Pup? Murder your beloved Captain?_

He turns over, remembers he’s still got a dagger strapped to him, curses a high-pitched whimper through his teeth, turns back to his other side.

_Made you look, though._

No.

_Yes._

Fuck off, fuck off, FUCK _OFF!_

“Porthos? Everything all right?”

“Yeah, yeah, just… need some air, yeah?”

“Be careful.”

“’Course!”

_’E don’t belieeeve you._

Jesus, you still here?

 _’E don’t_ trust _ya._

Don’t be fucking soft – this is _Athos_. If he didn’t trust me, I’d know.

_You snogged ’is boy._

Yeah.

_Didn’t ask, just grabbed him. Like the gutter trash you are._

Once.

_Twice._

Fine. Technically. Yeah. But never again.

_You sure about that?_

Yeah. He’s my friend.

_And look what you do with your friends._

Jealous?

_I’m dead._

Jealous?

“You alright, Porthos?”

“Yeah, mate.”

“Frightened the shit out of me.”

“Couldn’t make you smell much worse!”

“Hah! Good one! You up for a game, then?”

“Nah, just tryna clear my ’ead.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Nah, you’re alright, Borde.”

“I on’y meant…” Fainter: “Fucking _be_ like that, then!”

_That another ‘friend’?_

Don’t you ever shut up?

_Nah. You remember._

Yeah. Yeah, I fucking do.

Flea’s nose going in the air. _I ain’t stoppin’ to ’ear this bloody nonsense, got be’er things to do, ain’t I?_ And off she’d fuck, leaving us to it.

 _Fucked_ ’er _an’ all, dintcha?_

She’s her own woman.

_Like Aramis is his own man?_

That’s none o’ your business.

_Cushy life now, sleeping behind big, stone walls, praying his arse off, knowing exactly what’s gonner ’appen every hour of every day forever._

_Never thinking o’ you._

_Just prayin’, eatin’, sleepin’, prayin’, readin’, writin’, prayin’, sleepin’. No doubts in_ ’is _fuckin’ ’ead, are there?_

_No regrets._

_No fears._

_Just ’im an’ God. And ’is_ new _bruvvers._

 _Safe because you’re out ’ere, freezing your arse off, gettin’ shot at, slicing Spaniards an’ all sorts an’ blowing shit out of ’em._ ’E _don’t avta kill no more._ ’E _don’t avta worry what’s next._ ’E _’s off atonin’ for ’is sins, while you get to eat shit and kill. Every. Fuckin’. Day._

’E _don’t avta torture no-one…_

You shut your hole, you rotten cunt.

 _Rotten an’ rottin’. How about that?_ Thass _on ’im an’ all._

’E thought you was a danger to me. ’E was protectin’ me. Thassall.

_Right, right. Yeah. Nothin’ to do with…_

What? With _what?_

To do wi’ _wot?!_

_Spoken outta turn, din I? Don’t know nothin’ about the cunt._

Say your piece, fucker.

_S’just… you was talkin’ about jealousy earlier…?_

Wot? Him? Jealous?! _Wot?!_

“Porthos. All well?”

“Yeah?”

Athos arches an eyebrow, then goes back to fiddling with the cuff of his vambrace, eventually taking the armour’s leather thong between his teeth and pulling it tight that way, fingers nimbly rethreading and tying behind the tension.

“You want ’and wi’ tha’?”

“No. Thank you. All done now.” All the while he’s been Not Looking at him in that Athos way of taking everything in but not doing him the discourtesy of checking in with him explicitly. It abruptly sets his teeth on edge, and he couldn’t tell you why.

As if he’d spoken aloud, Athos looks up, eyebrow rising again. “Everything all right?”

“You asked that already.”

“Not… precisely.”

A swift, appraising look up and down him, and he finds himself thinking _He knows, he fucking knows_ , in a slurry of meaningless panic.

A sigh. “We’re wanted.”

“Us?”

A massive yawn from behind Athos, and d’Artagnan stretches into the half-light. “Apparently can’t wait. Hmm. You okay?”

He frowns. “Yeah.” Turns to Athos. “What can’t wait?”

His Captain slants a hooded look his way. “Some military nonsense. But apparently I can’t go for us by myself, so we all have to. Fetch the other two seniors, if you would, and meet us at the Marshals’ tent. I’ll encourage them to be brief.”

D’Artagnan chuckles, grins as Athos’s head turns to him, and the brightness on his face… Porthos can hardly bear it, just ducks his own head, checking all his weapons are on him.

“Porthos?”

“Yeah?”

“Now, please?”

“Of course.” and he makes the kind of nod he’s going to have to make in the tent – obeying orders, following

 _– some noble prick can’t be telling his_ boy _to run errands–_

suit.

“You too, please, d’Artagnan. Fetch Jamart.”

D’Artagnan makes a noise like a thwarted cat. “Seriously?”

“Now, please.”

“Fine.”

“I didn’t say you have to be polite about it.”

“That’s a relief.”

D’Artagnan’s shoulder joshes Porthos’s and he starts. “What?”

“Swap you?”

“No.”

“Fair enough. But it’s your turn next time.”

“Fine.”

He thinks he sees d’Artagnan frown out of the corner of his eye, but he shuts that out with his shoulder, heads to fetch the others.

As they all wait in the Marshall’s tent, shuffling to keep their blood warm, the humours moving, he senses Athos’s focus on him, heroically ignores his Captain’s gaze, the way he can feel attention from various eyes skittering across his neck, temples, shoulders. He can’t help but move, though, eyes low as he twitches under those light, biting touches, stamps his feet, champs his teeth.

His head hurts now, and somehow this tent is too warm, feeling his ears heating as his feet keep trying to freeze.

They hear the Fleming a good quarter-mile before he arrives, pushing through the tent flap, dragging a half-smiling d’Artagnan in his wake who looks _just_ this side of losing his famously patient good humour.

_Do ’im good – get a little dirty like the rest of us, eh?_

His jaw clenches so hard it’s like someone’s put a strap around his head and yanked it tight.

Fuck. Off.

“Porthos! _M’vriend_! So good to see you! Why the stormy face, eh?”

He smooths down his beard. Recrosses his arms. “We’ve been waitin’ on you.”

“No Marshalls yet, _maat_. No harm done.”

“An’ you make a hell of a ruckus. Not great goin’ for a spy now, is it?”

Jamart makes big, wounded eyes and presses his hand to his chest, gasping lightly. _Me?_ “A spy? No! I am, how to say, _vergemakkelijker_ , _verlichter_.”

Porthos just stares at him, unimpressed. Jamart knows a great deal of very good French. It’s part of his job.

The simpering, flaxen arsehole twinkles around the tent, which reflects nothing back at him. “I help to make things happen, make the going light, you know?”

“Jamart,” cuts in Athos, all knackered aristo. “You know very well the word is ‘facilitator’,” Jamart opens his mouth, draws a breath, all astonishment, “ _because I heard you use it only the other day_ ,” he continues, louder, slower.

The Fleming sniffs, rearranges himself into Theatrically Affronted, murmurs “I must have forgotten it, Captain, so good of you to remind me.” And then he squeaks as Porthos steps right into his space, glowering down at him. “Keep him off me! _Keep him off me!_ ”

“Porthos…” says Athos, quietly, but in Captain Voice.

Porthos snarls, jerks forward to see Jamart jerk backward, then falls back into line, turning from the _facilitator_ as he does so. There’s a hard mutter of something like laughter from the other men, but his face stays stony, taking no pleasure in it. 

It’s too close to times he was on the other side of it. And he knows why he rose to it, why someone playing to the crowd, all smooth voice and not-quite-French accent and, and expressive hands and that elegant fucking facial hair, is making his throat itch, his shoulders rise.

Athos makes one of those short, heavy breaths out through his nose, hands moving from across his chest to his hips and Porthos braces himself as the representatives of several regiments fall quiet, but suddenly there’s a bustle of Marshalls, and maps, and a sober, deferential silence, because This Is It.

Shit.

No more waiting. Not even for daybreak.

Fuck. Focus.

Fuck.

Right.

A deep breath from everyone and then the various Captains step up to the table and start to get stuck in. And he’s gotta give it to Jamart – when the poncey git ain’t playing the fool, he knows what he’s talking about, right enough.

 _Just like_ him _then._

Shush.

And, for a wonder, he does, and Porthos can be here, everything pushed back for the moment, to concentrate on this plan they’re cooking up on the fucking spot, seems like, Athos right in the thick of it, pointing, shaking his head, listening hard, nodding, stepping back, shaking a couple of hands, and gesturing his farewell as he comes back over to the Musketeers.

“Right,” he says, “let’s take the details back with us. We have an hour.”

Most of said details are thrashed out as they walk, to be fair. They just need to round it off by checking on the map.

“Take ten, more if you need them,” Athos tells him, jaw set but eyes clear and concerned, just a bit.

He shakes his head. “Nah. Needs stealth, ennit. I want a few sneaky fuckers.” He sniffs. “So that ain’t you,” he adds to d’Artagnan, who shakes his head with a grin. The lad has his own tasks anyway, his own men to command. Porthos tries to think if it’s the first time, properly, he’s going to be doing that. Shakes his head slightly. No time for that.

Half an hour later, he and his handpicked sneaky fuckers are on their way to do the dishonourable thing. And, somewhere at the back of his head where he knows he’s going to have to shake it out and have a good look at it later, is the worry that he ain’t worried about that.

And for a few hours, at least, his head is quiet.

**Author's Note:**

> I have tried, where I can, to use West Flemish instead of Dutch, but it’s not always possible and I apologise if I’ve (literally) misinterpreted anything. Let me know if I need to make any changes.
> 
> I’m also trying to get back to a more regular, more frequent update schedule, which will be made infinitely easier once February is done!


End file.
